Tag: easter

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Stone Eggs

This has been an Easter unlike any other…

For 4 weeks now, we’ve been in quarantine. Four weeks of scheduling grocery shopping. Four weeks my children haven’t seen their friends, cousins or classmates in the flesh. Four weeks I’ve been a mother, nurse, writer, wife … and now middle school and high school teacher, resource finder, creative outlet user, frontline emergency worker. I’m tired.

And now for the sake of my children and for the sake of searching for goodness (a principle I always promote), we are faced with a holiday, that in my humble opinion, must be celebrated. Not because I feel a religious obligation, because I don’t (and I mean that with no disrespect to those who do).  It must be celebrated because our children, our selves, have been robbed of enough these past few weeks.

We’ve been robbed of peace-of-mind, robbed of face-to-face human interaction, robbed of convenience, day-to-day food items and amenities we’ve come to expect, robbed of traditional schooling and many jobs, and some of us have even been robbed of our safety and health. I will not allow this virus to rob us of this holiday too. And yet we have this moral and social obligation to maintain social distancing for the sake of that very health and safety we stand to lose further.

So how? How do we celebrate when everything we’ve come to know and expect has changed? Holidays are largely built upon tradition and togetherness. I come from a huge Catholic family.  And while I have abandoned the religious aspect of the holiday due to my personal beliefs, I greatly anticipate the tradition and togetherness that comes with each holiday, this one included. In my family, we are used to a table filled with lamb and ham, deviled eggs and endless desserts, salads and side dishes. We are used to getting dressed-up in new spring apparel, Easter egg hunts and baskets filled to the brim. We are used to a day well spent in each other’s presence, with laughter, good food, conversation and games.

How do we celebrate this one… in quarantine- when resources and groceries are so limited? And the faces we normally anticipate seeing are all isolated in their own homes… How do we create that sense of ritual when it feels like there is none?

It seems ironic with the happenings this year that this holiday’s roots are in re-birth after sacrifice.

So first, we must be willing to sacrifice. Sacrifice that extra trip to the store… sacrifice having all the food dishes and all the activities that we’ve had in years past, sacrifice some gifts, sacrifice sitting with and hugging our loved ones, knowing that that sacrifice leads to a greater good (remind you of anyone?… Our sacrifices sound pretty small next to his.)

And then we must search for another way… Another way to commune, another way to feast, another way to continue tradition.

My family is setting up a Zoom encounter to see one another tomorrow- to chat and perhaps even play one of our famous family games.

See my previous post on playing family games virtually: (Zoom, WhatsApp, Skype and the like, are amazing technologies that are FREE and can be downloaded on virtually any device. And they allow us to see one another, connect and commune, even if it’s in the virtual sense. So why not still get dressed-up and pick out a family game to play. Or, find the joy in being dressed-down this year, but enjoy each other’s company nonetheless.)

I’ve never had salmon for Easter. My brother always makes this amazing roasted leg of lamb and most of my family members have their signature dishes that they contribute-broccoli salad, homemade cakes and pies, maple bacon brussels sprouts, Jell-o salad… oh how I’m going to miss them! But salmon is the best meat I’ve got in the freezer right now and so I’m thankful to have it and for the reason to cook it. Honestly, it suddenly feels like the perfect choice to accompany the asparagus I have. And potatoes are a lock-down staple! No eggs though… I’m down to my last four. My mom has ham and is cooking for only two this year. So she’s going to do a porch drop off and share some with us. I wonder if others might consider sharing with their families and friends what they have as well…

As long as I have been a mother, I have always crafted Easter baskets for each of my children and filled them with loads of goodies. The “Easter bunny” hides them and on Easter morning, it’s a spring-time scavenger hunt to find their hidden treasures in the house. The Easter egg hunt comes later, when the family gathers and it’s held with all the cousins together.

I don’t have enough goodies to make individual baskets this year, much less to stuff eggs. That is partially due to what was available in the store and partially due to delayed shipments and finances. So I’ve settled on a family basket this year. We will search for it and enjoy it together. And instead of silly little toys, earbuds and socks, I managed to score two new family games to play at home, to replace the time we normally spend elsewhere.

And then we’re going to put in a family garden. It’s the season of fertility, after all.

Instead of dying eggs- because food conservation is a must, a dye kit isn’t worth it for four eggs, and quite frankly- my kids were never big fans of hard-boiled eggs anyway… we came up with a new idea! It started with my teenage daughter painting rocks to pass the time and then delivering “Smile!” eggs to neighbors as a random act of kindness. And now it has continued as an activity to recreate two time-honored traditions- dying and decorating eggs and the well-loved egg hunt.

This year, we are painting and hiding Stone Eggs!

We went on a family walk in the woods this morning, collecting rocks as we went.

Then we brought them home to wash and dry them.

And then we busted out our old paints and creative juices.

After they dried, we hand delivered them in a basket, to the yards and porches in the neighborhood. Little surprises left for the people around us. It’s like we got a turn at being the Easter bunny for once. I watched my almost 13 year old son, who is increasingly hard to excite these days, dart in and out of the yards to deliver our goods unseen, like a ninja… or an Easter bunny. On his face was pure joy and it shot straight to my heart. A perfect culmination of our day of family togetherness.

The irony that the eggs, a pagan symbol of fertility, are made of stone this year, like the stone rolled away from Jesus’s grave, didn’t escape me. I am a complicated bundle of everything that has made me who I am- loss of faith and a huge loving Catholic family all rolled together.

And I am at peace with that.

Just as I am at peace with this Easter unlike any other… an Easter where space might have divided us, but love kept us together. An Easter of sacrifice and giving to others. An Easter of new traditions created from old ones. An Easter of making do, of ingenuity and creativity, of grasping every bit of gratitude you can find and searching for goodness everywhere… even if it leads you to a neighbor’s porch, to a dried creek bed of rocks, to an empty tomb.

This is an of Easter with stone eggs.

There was another Easter that was very much unlike any other… it was the Easter that my grandmother died… read that post here:

Learning the meaning of Easter

 

 

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Tradition is the Chocolate Egg in my Easter Basket

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In my house, Easter egg dying was always a family affair. A day or so before Easter we’d boil, cool and divide up the eggs. And the four of us kids would spend a solid hour or two dunking our eggs and decorating them with stickers or a magic egg-writing crayon. Some of those brightly colored eggs always found themselves in our baskets. And it was obvious, at least later in life, that our baskets were always hand-prepared, never the store-bought variety. The contents were always economical, but thoughtful. And when the Easter bunny came, he hid them in various places in our home. When we awoke, we scampered through the house excitedly to find them. If you accidentally found someone else’s, the rule was that you quietly put it back so as not to ruin the discovery for your sibling. My parents got a basket too, which my playful father always managed to find and hand-over to my Mom.

After baskets came a yummy breakfast. And after breakfast was church. After church, we’d run home to eat more candy and my mother would finish her side dishes to bring to my grandparents house. We’d parade over to my grandparents house in our Easter clothes, which usually had chocolate on them by that point. And there, the whole family would gather. We feasted on ham and scalloped potatoes, green beans and fruit salad. And we talked and we laughed and we played. The kids compared the goodies in their baskets and ran around on sugar highs, while the adults enjoyed a break from their weekly stressors and shared stories.

And so tradition would have it that my children too, have hand-prepared baskets that are hidden in the house. The same rule applies for finding your sibling’s basket and the same parent basket finds its way there too, with a few dark chocolates and maybe some coffee. Over a yummy breakfast, we excitedly anticipate the change in the seasons and we start making our warm weather plans. And while my children get just as excited about candy as any other kids would, they always ask, “Where are we going for Easter?” Easter dinner is what they’re referring to … because they know that holidays mean family. And if ever they spent an Easter without at least some of their cousins, they’d be devastated. And my children know that regardless of where we go, we never show up empty-handed. Mommy always has dishes to prepare; and the kids, anxious to play with their cousins, hurry to get ready and help carry the items out to the car. And when we arrive at our destination, we feast and we talk, we laugh and we play.

Some things have changed. My grandparents are no longer living and Easter is often rotated. Some family have moved out-of-state. And as the family grows, so too does their experiences and their extended family. Some, like me, have also changed our religious beliefs and practices. But we all still treasure tradition.

 

Living my life as a self-proclaimed non-believer, every holiday that rolls around, there’s always someone who has some sort of remark about why I am celebrating a “religious holiday.” I then feel compelled to educate them on how most Christian holidays started out as Pagan holidays and practices, which the Christians essentially re-purposed and re-named in an effort to more easily convert the Pagans. And I’m usually met by blank stares as few people who make such remarks actually know the history of world religion and culture.

The truth is, egg decorating and fertility festivals pre-date the first “Easter” or “Resurrection Sunday” and eggs and bunnies have virtually nothing to do with Christ’s resurrection. Rabbits, who reproduce readily, have been a symbol for goddesses of fertility since ancient times. And the first “Easter bunny” most likely came from a German fable. Easter as we think of it, culturally, has much more to do with German traditions and the Pagan “Spring Re-awakening.” And these customs and practices have been largely adopted by Christians and re-configured to suit the needs of Christian teachings.

Similarly, many of the customs surrounding Christmas, stemmed from German roots and Pagan festivals. Decorating cut trees came from a custom associated with the “Feast of Adam and Eve”-a tradition based on the Old testament, not Christ. Whereas, decorating outdoor trees, particularly, evergreens, was a Pagan practice. In fact, in the early Christian Church, decorating with evergreen was banned during the Christmas season due to its associations with Paganism. The Pagan Festival of Lights involved lighting homes and tombs in honor of several gods and goddesses. And the gift-giving festival for the Roman god Saturn, which coincided with the Winter Solstice, was a widely celebrated festival that early Christians sought to replace. Jesus’ actual birth is unknown, though some historians believe he was likely born in Spring.

So why do I keep getting blasted with “Jesus is the Reason for the Season”?!

Well, that’s because Christians decided long ago, what they would celebrate and when. Christianity holds the majority in many countries, including the United States. Those religious meanings have become their tradition, and for them, these holidays hold great religious significance. The world and the U.S. is a collection of people who hold various beliefs and various customs. If we want to peacefully co-exist, we must learn to have a mutual respect for one another. We must learn to accept that different holidays, different customs, have different meanings for different people. Those of us who choose to celebrate a holiday or a custom simply for its tradition, should respect the sacredness that the holiday holds for religious observers. And those who find religious significance in their holiday celebrations should acknowledge that many of the holiday traditions are a collection of both religious and non-religious customs, many of which have ancient roots that have nothing to do with their current beliefs.

In the U.S. in particular, one will find a mosaic of cultural influences which create the holiday celebration as we know it today – much like a holiday table is a mosaic of familial recipes. Everyone in my family agrees, we have to have my father’s mother’s rolls and my mother’s grandmother’s corn pudding and my grandmother’s pineapple salad. My children will hopefully continue these and then add a Chilean dish or my self-invented marshmallow-jello parfait. Just like family recipes can come together to create a wonderus feast that satisfies all who come to it, religion and culture too, can coexist and fulfill our needs.

So, if Christians can take their egg-filled baskets into church to be blessed and their parents can use the fertile symbol of a hard-boiled egg to instead illustrate Christ’s empty tomb … than non-Christians too can use the traditions associated with a holiday to teach and celebrate with family. While Easter Sunday does not include a church service for my immediate family, it does include family togetherness, the celebration of life and generations of tradition. And those traditions are the sweetness of life. They are our comforts and the things we look for above all else in an ever-changing world and an ever-changing life.

Tradition is your grandmother’s recipe. It’s a monogrammed stocking or a basket that you held year after year and the one that you look for. It’s the cookies and milk for Santa. It’s reading the same story or poem on the same day every year until you can practically recite it yourself; but you don’t, out of reverence for the moment. It’s candles on a cake and a song that you sing. It’s a routine you expect … a custom you’ve adopted. It’s the threads of your past that are woven into your soul and tie you to your ancestors; and it creates a beautiful and varied textile that you can’t help but to wrap yourself in. And it didn’t come about overnight or from one single source but from many places and many people over many years. It is comfortable and familiar and exciting. It’s the chocolate egg amongst all the other candies and tiny gifts that change with time. And without tradition, there would be a void that is as palpable as a hollow chocolate bunny … or an empty tomb.

Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring Re-Awakening! Happy Jelly Bean day! Happy Traditions … whatever you want to call them!

 

Below are articles I referenced and ones that are worth reading if you have interest in holiday traditions:

http://www.wisegeek.org/where-did-the-tradition-of-the-christmas-tree-come-from.htm

https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/easter-symbols

http://listverse.com/2012/12/15/10-remarkable-origins-of-common-christmas-traditions/

 

 

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Learning the meaning of Easter

cross pic

The Easters of my childhood were, I believe, a pretty typical middle class, American experience. The Easter bunny delivered baskets of goodies while we slept. Hidden in the house, we searched for them when we woke. Occasionally we attended an egg hunt and Easter morning always meant your best dress and an early Sunday church service. Easter dinner was almost always at Mimi and Pop Pops house – ham, pot-luck sides, a cross-shaped cake for my religious family’s celebration of the resurrection and continued candy consumption by the kids as the cousins all ran around on sugar highs.

Holidays were always a good time. They were a distraction from the every day stressors and a reason for the family to gather. The food was always good, the company relaxed and enjoyable and the amount of childhood mirth created a pleasant chaos. I come from a huge Catholic family and each generation has done a good job creating as large and fabulous a generation as their own. When the cousins get together… they’re unstoppable! It’s truly impressive.

Mimi and Pop pop, my father’s parents, were the patriarchs of this empire. So it would only be appropriate that many of my childhood holiday memories occurred in that home. And it would only be appropriate that Mimi would breathe her last breath in the same fashion.

We knew it was coming. Her body had been revealing it’s secret a year before the diagnosis was finally made … stage 4 ovarian cancer. Her 100lb weight loss and weakness now had an explanation and we were given weeks to say good-bye. Weeks turned into months. She made it through Christmas, the birth of a great grand baby, and New year’s. Winter turned into spring. Spring brought with it the rebirth, the reawakening. Easter was approaching. As we prepared for the holiday, it became clear that Mimi’s season was rapidly coming to an end.

Now, as a nurse I can tell you, the most painful experience to witness is death … and when it occurs on a holiday…the bite carries extra venom it seems. For many, the holiday is forever stained and the once joyous traditions are smothered by the painful reminder of loss. Tragic and unexpected losses are of course more earth shattering but even the expected ones hurt.

So what do you do when you, as a mother, are obligated to give your children an Easter but as a granddaughter and a family member your presence is needed at the bedside? How can you save your children from the ruined holiday phenomenon and still honor your ailing grandmother? I’ll tell you what you do, because my family did it …. and they nailed it!

You pack up the baskets and the plastic eggs, the ham and the cross cake pan, the dresses and the mounds of candy…. and then you pack a weekend bag. And you spend your holiday weekend at your Mimi’s house along with everyone else.

The baskets were still hidden. The plastic eggs still stuffed and waiting to be found. The ham was still baked and the pot luck sides prepared with the same love as always, in Mimi’s kitchen. The cross-shaped cake was iced and decorated just as beautifully as before and everyone wore their spring dresses and pastel dress shirts. While the kids searched for plastic eggs, Mimi gasped in the back bedroom. While some explored their baskets, others held their mother’s hand. While some cooked, others served. While some ministered, others rested. While a new baby nursed, an old mother closed her eyes.

Easter flowed through the house all weekend, as did the traffic through Mimi’s bedroom. Like the flow of water over a bed of rocks so was the flow of family and friends at her bedside. A slow and almost chaotic pattern of loved ones, ever-changing, always returning-some brief, others for hours. We sat vigil, told stories, prayed, begged, confessed, laughed and cried. We gathered to sing. We gathered to pray…. always at her bedside, she was never alone. She took her last breath as her son, a priest, performed the daily mass in her room on Easter Monday.

It was a merciful end to a year of suffering. Yet the potential for a stained Easter was still there. There could have been regrets, conflict and fear. It could have been my worst Easter ever. Instead, it has become one of my favorites. No one made an excuse not to come to dinner that year. No one missed the opportunity to say good-bye. A life was celebrated and dignified and loved. The older members of the family got closure and sibling support. And the youngest members learned through observation what it was to rally, to minister, and to love. They learned that holidays are always about the people you love and that being there for those in need doesn’t mean a loss of the things you enjoy. And we were ALL reminded what Easter is really about.

Whether you subscribe to the Christian resurrection of Jesus Christ or the pagan rituals of the Spring Reawakening and Fertility. Easter reminds us that every season has it’s beginning and its end and there is beauty that follows death. May you search even the empty tombs til you find your savior. May you find yourself singing in the presence of death. And when life seems to be handing you a royally shitty hand, I hope you don’t forget that there are still colored eggs stuffed with treats hiding in the tall grasses …. it’s up to you to find them.

I said before, that as a nurse, I can tell you that the most painful experiences in life are those that involve death … but they can also be the most powerful, the most fulfilling and the most healing. When families run and hide from death, when they fight it … it is horrendously painful for everyone present and not present. But when they embrace it and they gather and they celebrate and support … it is so beautiful you can only hope and pray that your own end is met with equal love.